The intention of the new Vikram Prabhu film Sirai is to talk about the need to empower the underprivileged about their rights, using the resources and power one may have access to. But to present that idea, director Suresh Rajakumari and writer Tamizh are not taking a preachy approach. With a story that feels generic at the beginning and slowly becomes exciting towards the second half, with the screenplay trying to break our prediction patterns, Sirai is an earnest film that has its heart in the right place.
Constable Kathiravan is a Reserve police officer who has been doing camp duty for almost seven years. A lapse that happened during the transit duty of an accused puts him under departmental enquiry. During that phase, he voluntarily takes up a long-distance passport to present an accused named Abdul Rauf to a court. What we see in the movie are the events that unfold during this journey.
One of the things that felt really impressive about the movie is that the makers are taking an effort to present the story differently. If you look at the ultimate structure of this drama, it can easily be narrated in a very linear way. However, Suresh and Tamizh know how to play with the graph. The film begins with an impressively staged event that gives us an idea about our central character. After that, when the accused Abdul Rauf comes to the picture, we see a major portion that shows us this phase where we anticipate him trying to escape, and in parallel, the movie gives us an idea about how Abdul ended up in jail.
The second half is where the smartness in writing elevates this simplistic, generic movie into an emotional and impactful one. The overall layout of the story is not changing dramatically. However, Tamizh’s screenplay breaks our predictions through smaller changes, and that generates curiosity, which also works as a distraction. Just when we think the film will choose a closure that will only work in the cinema, it reveals the larger injustice faced by Abdul. All the details we saw till that point, which looked like the usual drill, add to that moment, making us root for him. However, the screenplay pushes things further, which can be called emotional twists.
Kathiravan is easily one of the finest characters that Vikram Prabhu has had in his career. There is a subtle element in the way this character is presented to us, and Vikram Prabhu manages to internalize most of the anger, doubts, and compassion of that character on screen. LK Akshay Kumar is playing the part of Abdul Rauf in this movie. We see the character mostly from the point of view of Kathiravan, and Kumar manages to present that transition convincingly. Malayali actor Anishma Anilkumar plays the significant role of Kalaiyarasi in this movie, and she has dubbed for her character in a fairly convincing way. It was a character that demanded the adorability her face offered, and at the same time, there was a dramatic arc to that character, which she pulled off very neatly. One more Malayali actor, Remya Suresh, also got a prominent role in this movie.
Set in the pre-Internet era, Suresh Rajakumari’s movie takes ample time to set up its foundation. The layers of judgment a Muslim had to go through in those late ’90s were incorporated smoothly into this screenplay, and it adds to the overall struggle of that character. The movie also presents the shock of delayed justice by viewing the whole thing from the POV of the hero, who is as clueless as we are. With the final act keeping us engrossed and giving something unexpected without looking like a filmy reality, Sirai is a movie that struck a good balance in telling a political story in a compelling manner.
